Excerpt: If that was true, you would think polls would show that Trump is running better than, or at least on par with, an average Republican in these states. They don’t. In New York, the most recent Siena poll has Clinton beating Trump, 57 percent to 34 percent. This is not a reflection of phenomenal popularity on her part; the survey finds 48 percent of registered voters in the Empire State feel favorable to her, and the same percentage feels unfavorable. But, the protestations of Root and other boosters aside, voters in Trump’s home state like him even less than Clinton; only 29 percent have a favorable view of him, compared with 59 percent who see him unfavorably. And what limited support Trump does get in New York doesn’t come from blue-collar voters, either: He does best among those who make more than $100,000 per year, and a full 64 percent of voters in that group still have an unfavorable opinion of him. ... Trump loves to cite his poll numbers during the debates, but he never mentions the fact that Clinton has beaten him in 24 of the last 28 head-to-head national polls. And his numbers in those polls have worsened over time. (When you say this to a Trump fan, they insist, “those polls mean nothing right now.” Even if the head-to-head numbers are not necessarily predictive, the favorable-unfavorable numbers are pretty relevant. Right now Donald Trump is detested by the general electorate -- the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, an astonishing 56 percent of respondents had a strongly unfavorable opinion of Trump -- and he would begin the general election as the most unpopular figure ever nominated to be the presidential candidate for a major party. --Jim Geraghty)

This doesn't finish Rubio--he was finished at least a week ago. I wrote to his campaign then and suggested he drop out and endorse Cruz. And I have been a Rubio Supporter. This moves us a big step towards President Hillary. No one with Trump's unfavorable rating has ever been elected president. There are none so blind as those who will not see. ~Bob

Excerpt: The reality is that Donald Trump leads in delegates for the Republican nomination, but still has a difficult path forward to secure the nomination outright.

The reality is that John Kasich has no mathematical path forward to win the Republican nomination. The reality is that if Donald Trump has the most delegates, though not 1237, all the people saying Trump can still be stopped are fooling themselves.

The reality is that the only person now able to stop Trump from getting a majority or plurality of delegates is Ted Cruz.

Excerpt: For the record, I have been relentless in my criticisms of Donald Trump, both in print and on my radio show, preferring any other Republican candidate. Based on his past, I have not had any reason to trust him as a conservative or as a Republican, and he has exhibited serious character flaws. Nevertheless, truth must trump opposition to Trump. And the truth is that the left-wing attack on Trump’s Chicago rally had little, if anything, to do with the incendiary comments Donald Trump has made about attacking protesters at his events. Leftist mobs attack and shut down events with which they differ as a matter of course. They do so regularly on American college campuses, where conservative speakers — on the rare occasions they are invited — are routinely shouted down by left-wing students (and sometimes faculty as well) or simply disinvited as a result of leftist pressure on the college administration. (They want Trump because the know Hillary or Bernie will crush him. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Donald J. Trump thus far has not shown that he has the level-headedness to be president. He has no political ideology and could just as well govern to the left of Hillary Clinton as to the right of her. Yet his sloppy way of speaking has earned him equally sloppy, over-the-top analogies — to Mussolini, Hitler, George Wallace, and a host of other populist and racist demagogues. ... There are many ways to assess Trump. The debates and rallies give us glimpses of his ill-preparedness (at least in comparison to his rivals). So far his vision has not transcended banalities and generalities. He seems to have no team of respected advisers, at least not yet. Indeed, at this point, advising Trump apparently would be a career-killer in the Boston–New York–Washington corridor. No one quite knows who talks to him on foreign policy. He is an empty slate onto which millions write their hopes and dreams, as “Make America great again” channels the empty “Hope and Change.” Those are grounds enough for rejecting him.

Excerpt: There's another difference between us: I could glean from the context of Hewitt's question that he was asking Trump what he would do to maintain our nuclear arsenal. (The triad refers to our land-, sea- and air-based systems for delivering nukes.) Trump had absolutely no idea what Hewitt was asking, and his answer was genuinely terrifying.

Excerpt: Kasich worked at Lehman Brothers, but that’s about all Trump’s campaign gets accurate in this ad about his association with the firm. Kasich had no banking experience prior to getting hired by the firm, and he largely played a facilitator role as managing director. He gave strategic financial advice to other companies and generated business by using his contacts in various sectors – not making risky mortgage investments. Perhaps one could argue that it’s all part of the Lehman operation. But it’s preposterous and simply not credible to say Kasich, as one managing director out of 700, in a firm of 25,000, “helped” the firm “destroy the world economy.” Four Pinocchios

Excerpt: A woman who was hired by Donald Trump in the 1980s as the chief engineer on Trump towers has said she ‘certainly would not vote for him for president’.

Barbara Res, who has been mentioned in Republican presidential candidate Trump’s speeches as an example of ‘how great he’s going to be for women’, said that Trump is ‘not who want to be president of the United States’.

Scary:Trump: I’ll Use Military to Intimidate Mexico Into Paying for Wall

Excerpt: Ever since Donald Trump began claiming that he would build a wall along the entire Mexican border and that Mexico would pay for it, intelligent people have been asking how he intends to make them do that. Now we have our answer: He’ll use the “rebuilt” military he creates to intimidate them into paying for it. 9A tad of spin on this, but still scary. ~Bob)

Are we heading to a face-off between the two weakest candidates in history?

Excerpt: Here’s what is striking about this potential choice. Clinton and Trump would be the two weakest candidates to face each other in a general election for president, certainly in recent history. If you look at the simple (and important) metric of personal favorability, Clinton’s and Trump’s popularity with voters is historically low. In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, both candidates’ favorable ratings were “underwater,” meaning more people dislike them than like them. Clinton’s favorable rating is 46 percent, and her unfavorable rating is 52 percent. And Trump’s favorable rating is 30 percent and his unfavorable is 67 percent. Even more stunning is Trump’s “strongly” unfavorable rating among 56 percent of all Americans (these are people who would crawl over broken glass to vote against him). Really stunning. (I will not vote for a life-long liberal with an aversion to transparency, a contempt for the truth and a past record of shady dealings. Not Hillary and Not Trump. Not ever. I'm a lifelong Republican. I was a volunteer for Nixon at 14, and for Goldwater at 18 before joining the Marines in August, 1964 and headed to Vietnam. In 1968, I was a college student and supported Nixon. In 1972, I graduated from College in June and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in November, defeating a Democrat incumbent by nine votes out of 60,000 in a 4-1 Democrat district, last won by a Republican in 1938. I was reelected four times, even being nominated by both parties in 1976. In 1982, I was the Republican whip when I decided to retire undefeated. I have campaigned for many Republicans since. I have never voted for a Democrat for President. I will not vote for a life-long liberal this year, not Hillary, not Bernie, not Bloomberg (if he runs) and certainly not Trump. It looks like Trump may get the nomination, which I think guarantees President Hillary. I hope some conservative runs third party so that those of us with conservative principles will have someone to vote for. Otherwise I will write someone in. ~Bob)

Excerpt: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last August on the subject of his relationship with ACN, formerly the “American Communications Network,” Donald Trump was unequivocal: “I do not know the company. I know nothing about the company other than the people who run the company,” he said. “I’m not familiar with what they do or how they go about doing that.” That was a surprising statement, given that, from 2006 until he announced his presidential bid in 2015, Trump was easily ACN’s most famous unofficial spokesman. For nearly a decade, Trump appeared in promotional videos touting ACN’s “revolutionary products,” he devoted an episode of NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice to ACN’s “revolutionary” videophone, and he earned millions of dollars giving speeches at ACN events as recently as early 2015. Introducing ACN executives Greg Provenzano and Mike Cupisz on The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, Trump said: “They run a company called ACN, which I know very well.”

Trump’s Support Suggests The French Revolution Is Finally Hitting America

The French Revolution and the Trump campaign are marked by an acute loss of restraint while demanding a redress of legitimate grievances.

Excerpt: Is the conflict between Donald Trump and the GOP establishment for the heart of the Republican Party really like the French Revolution? Carl Icahn, in an interview with Neil Cavuto at the tail end of Super Tuesday, certainly suggested so. Ichan’s comments bear a ring of truth. Irritated Trump supporters are pursuing the model of the French Revolution while trying to cast the GOP establishment as the ancien regime. The French Revolution was undone by its excesses and its loss of restraint, both of which also characterize the Trump campaign.

Always Worth Reading: There Will Be No Republican Unity in 2016. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt

Excerpt: This year should tell us that nothing in politics is certain, but right now, there’s just no way for the Republican party to leave the convention in Cleveland unified. You can’t square this circle. A certain percentage of Trump voters won’t support anyone but their man as the nominee. On the flip side, 37 percent of Republican voters yesterday said they would “seriously consider” voting for a third party or other candidate if Trump is the nominee. Barring a sudden Ted Cruz surge in the final 20 contests, the Trump folks will argue their guy won the most votes, the most states, and has the most delegates. We know how quick Trump is to hurl accusations he’s being cheated -- even when they’re baseless. Nothing we’ve seen in Trump’s behavior going back years indicates he’s capable of graciously conceding defeat and pledging to do his part to help elect the Republican nominee. Nothing we’ve seen from his supporters suggests they’re amenable to voting for Cruz or some other Republican. On the flip side, the #NeverTrump crowd believes that voting for Trump is selling their souls, reducing themselves to the humiliating subservience of Chris Christie. ... All the polling indicates Rubio would have crushed Hillary Clinton in a general election. Cruz looks like he’s got a shot -- not a great shot, but a shot. Donald Trump’s general-election numbers are sinking like a stone. (If you can stand him, John Kasich matches up quite well.) Trump’s fans walk around with great confidence about his general election strengths for which there is no real evidence. They’re convinced he will win over traditional blue-collar Democrats. So far, he doesn’t. They’re convinced he will win over African Americans. Polling in February puts his support among African Americans between 4 and 10 percent. (Romney won 6 percent.) They’re convinced he’ll win a lot more Latinos than everyone thinks. (He’s currently at less than half Mitt Romney’s level of support.) They’re convinced he’ll win Democratic states like New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. (He trails by 18 to 23 points in those states in the most recent polls.) (Morning Jolt is a free e-newsletter which I recommend you subscribe to. ~Bob)

It's Time For All Marco Rubio Supporters -- And All Conservatives -- To Unite Around Ted Cruz. By Avik Roy

Excerpt: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has suspended his presidential campaign, after losing his home state to Donald Trump by nearly 20 percentage points. It’s a disappointing end for Rubio, who was the Republican Party’s best hope for winning the general election, and for expanding the GOP tent to younger voters and minorities. But for Rubio supporters like myself, there is no time to grieve, because the hour is late, and there is only one option left for conservatives to win the White House.

Excerpt: There is no sugar-coating tonight’s results. Even the one, small bright spot — John Kasich denying Donald Trump Ohio’s delegates — may end up presenting the conservative movement with a classic case of winning a battle but losing the war. Kasich is going to soldier on, doing his dead-level-best to sail into the convention as some sort of kingmaker/power-broker. In the meantime, however, he’ll split the anti-Trump vote even further, allowing Trump to continue to win contest after contest with a plurality of voters. It’s self-serving, it’s vain, and it’s Kasich. And while I like and respect Marco Rubio, his futile decision to stay in the race to swing for the fences in Florida certainly cost Ted Cruz victories in both North Carolina and Missouri (at least if Trump’s narrow lead in Missouri holds overnight).

Worth Reading: Where does a third candidate come in? By Jennifer Rubin

Excerpt: There is certainly a rationale for making a third candidate push. Should Trump be the nominee, large percentages of Republicans will either stay home or vote for Hillary Clinton. “When 30-43% of the voters depending on the state are considering a 3rd party, clearly the truth about Trump is getting out,” says Tim Miller of the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC. If for no other reason, Republicans in House, Senate and gubernatorial races will want someone at the top of the ticket to make sure Republicans show up. Otherwise, massive losses in both houses can be expected. Cruz, the only viable alternative at this point, would actually benefit from a third candidate push. Both GOP voters and convention delegates need to understand that Trump is unelectable, in large part because Republicans won’t vote for him, and that his nomination would, in effect, shatter the GOP. His hopes rest in galvanizing the non-Trump GOP voters; the threat of a breakaway effort certainly helps in that regard.

Excerpt: Many voters have said during this election season that they want a president who "tells it like it is." At the March 10 Republican presidential debate, the candidates were given an opportunity for such candor when the politically treacherous subject of Social Security was raised. With Social Security, "telling it like it is" requires recognition of several difficult realities including the following ones. #1: Social Security faces a large and growing financing shortfall. According to the latest trustees' report, Social Security faces a financing gap roughly equal to 21 percent of its scheduled tax collections or 16 percent of scheduled benefits over its 75-year actuarial valuation window. Even corrections of this large magnitude would produce only a temporary solvency finding, leaving program finances on an unstable course such that the shortfall would begin to re-emerge the very next year after the fix. Correcting the program's total structural shortfall would require larger adjustments, equal to roughly 33 percent of scheduled taxes or 23 percent of scheduled benefits.

Excerpt: Health Care Service Corp.'s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law's state exchanges for buying coverage. ... HCSC is the latest large insurer to report losses on 2015 ACA business, a troubling sign for the state exchanges that are the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The far-reaching legislation has increased access to insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. Though the law has brought new customers to many insurers, much of that growth has been unprofitable, reflecting higher-than-expected medical expenses, regulatory challenges and unexpected shortfalls in federal risk-sharing programs.

Maryland Officer Killed In Planned Ambush. Police Officer Jacai Colson was shot and killed from ambush at the Prince George’s County Police Department’s District III police station at 7600 Barlowe Road

Excerpt: Mr. Sanders knows that his corporate-special-interest line already plays well with crowds; it reminds people of the stench of the Clintons’ ethics. But he may also be betting that the FBI finds more to peg on Mrs. Clinton than simply classified emails. And he may be right.

Bernie's billionaires: Some wealthy donors have backed Sanders for years

Excerpt: While Bernie Sanders has pitched himself as the presidential candidate for the little guy -- tapping into the wallets of voters angry over Wall Street’s influence in politics -- a deeper dive shows Sanders has enlisted an arsenal of millionaire and billionaire backers who have backed his political career since his early Senate runs a decade ago.

Excerpt: Socialism and communism both involve ceding to the state control over the distribution of goods and services for the masses. This involves giving up individual rights, and giving the state a good measure of control over our personal lives. This road always leads to tyranny, no matter what you pave it with, and no matter what you name it. Socialism requires a power clique—or, as Lenin put it, an elite “vanguard”—in order to pretend to function. This means going heavy on executive power and rubber-stamp light on the legislative. Socialism demands that we place blind trust in whoever takes the reins of power to distribute society’s goods and services. This tiny elite, by the way, typically enjoys enormous privileges and a much higher standard of living than the hoi polloi, simply by being a part of the elite “nomenklatura.”

Worth Reading: The Rise of American Protectionism. By Richard A. Epstein

Excerpt: There are of course major difference between the insidious Trump and buffoonish Sanders. The former, for example, favors low taxes and the latter confiscatory ones. Still, the real selling point of each boils down to one issue: In the indecorous language of the pollster, Pat Caddell, Americans feel “they have been screwed” by free trade. Caddell writes as if this virulent falsehood is an undisputed fact. What is undisputed, however, is that Adam Smith’s defense of free trade is in retreat as protectionism becomes the common thread across the both political parties. It is as though the economic unwisdom of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is back. The question is why protectionism is having a political moment. (When Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill, against the advice of1,000 economists, it ignited a trade war, killed world trade and turned a recession into the great depression. Brace yourself. ~Bob)

Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza discussed the history of the Democratic Party and his new film Hillary’s America with Breitbart News daily host Stephen K. Bannon today on SiriusXM radio, calling it akin to a criminal gang. “I begin to look at the Democratic Party and Progressivism not just as a movement of ideas but as a movement to seize wealth and power — to get its hands on the wealth of America and exercise power over other people’s lives in the same way a criminal gang does,” said D’Souza. “We’re telling the story of American politics in a way that shows many of the crimes of the Democratic party, of Obama and Hillary, are rooted in things this party has been doing to American and to poor people for a long time,” he added.

Hillary Clinton Promise: ‘We’re Going to Put a Lot of Coal Miners and Coal Companies Out of Business’

Excerpt: Appearing at a CNN town hall in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promised that in her administration, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Clinton’s stark statement was not only an acknowledgement that she plans to continue waging President Obama’s “war on coal,” it was a clear sign she intends to accelerate the destruction of one of the country’s leading energy sector industries. It may also have an undesirable political effect in Ohio, which was the ninth largest coal producing state in 2013

Excerpt: Judging from his recent lengthy interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, President Obama has learned nothing in the past seven years from the serious, serial failures of his foreign policy. Instead, Obama radiated a preternatural, delusional, and typical self-confidence expounding on the efficacy of his Obama Doctrine, which he has followed faithfully since 2009. The Obama Doctrine combines the worst features of the morally obtuse anti-war left, unrealistic realism, and naïve multilateralism

Excerpt: The indicators endorsed in the framework are “unprecedent (sic) in their scale and nuance,” according to John Pullinger, National Statistician of Britain, and immediate past chair of an expert group of national statistical agencies that pulled together the indicators for the Statistical Commission. (The U.S. was not an expert group member, but participated in a grouping known as the Friends of the Chair of the Statistical Commission that provided guidance for the effort.) Among other things, the SDG indicator quest included a “really strong push,” in Pullinger’s phrase, for “disaggregation,” which has been defined by the U.N. as a breakdown of statistics by “income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographical location, or other characteristics. (Big Bro on steroids=UN. Should've dumped them off the island a long time ago......Americans still do not realize they are being globalized. TRANSFORMATION. Forward! They will keep those with the mark that they want to keep; the rest can starve and disintegrate. Expect AI to come to the forefront; spare parts cheaper than healthcare and robots will perform as ordered and not question their superiors or have an opinion. Globalists pushing to decrease world population. They may get it...but not in a manner they can control or envision. --Barb)

Excerpt: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed that 124 illegal immigrant criminals released from jail by the Obama administration since 2010 have been subsequently charged with murder...."The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years — who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes — are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 new homicides. ... What's more, her report said that in 2014, ICE released 30,558 criminal aliens who had been convicted of 92,347 crimes. (Was there anything in the Oath of Office for POTUS about protecting the security of the legal American people and the "folks" in it? Or are these just "glitches" and "bumps in the road" to the TRANSFORMATION? --Barb)

Excerpt: Former IT entrepreneur and banker Nguyen Quang A is running a disciplined campaign to be elected to Vietnam's parliament, declaring his assets, securing voter endorsements and appearing in a slick online video. He is not, however, a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam nor the kind of candidate that the monolithic ruling party wants in its rubber-stamp legislature. Quang A is one of its biggest critics and among 19 dissidents trying to run as independents in a May election to the assembly, determined to test the sincerity of promises made by the party to strengthen democracy. (A wealthy VN businessman is challenging the Party to live up to its claim of being a democratic institution? I admire his courage, but I think his life is liable to take a steep downward turn, starting very soon. It will be interesting to see how this goes. --Del)

The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2013)

Excerpt: This report estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level. The study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.

Excerpt: George Washington, our first president, is probably our greatest and most decent statesman. We celebrate Washington’s Birthday each February. But March 16 marks the birthday of probably the second-most important and decent American, James Madison. Madison became our fourth president, but his presidency is not the chief source of his greatness. There would have been an entirely different America without Madison’s enormous input and foresight at the contentious 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Excerpt: Environmental Protection Agency officials apparently weren’t willing to “go out on a limb” for Flint, Mich., as it became apparent the city’s water supply had been contaminated with high levels of lead, according to an internal agency memo revealed at a Tuesday congressional hearing. Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House oversight committee, revealed an internal EPA memo during a hearing Tuesday between agency officials responsible for overseeing clean water operations in Michigan. The September 2015 memo said, “I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for.” (Must've changed their agenda--Didn't Obama make a trip there to point out the issue (with the white Republican Governor) and used by Hillary et al for campaigning to get in good with the abused black folks? --Barb)

Former Mil Officials: Obama’s National Security Council Is Full Of Activists

Excerpt: .... One Democrat with a long history in the defense industry told Breaking Defense in January that one of the most frustrating elements of the NSC is that it’s staffed by people without real-world experience, either in intelligence or the military. The White House is largely responsible for massively expanding the power and scope of the NSC, though Jamie Garelick, a member of the Defense Policy Board, said the Obama administration’s preoccupation with executive authority does not just restrict itself to defense but applies across the board. Anxieties about the role of the NSC turn up frequently in Washington, D.C., especially when it oversteps its bounds and makes headlines for inserting executive narratives in order to override departmental decisions.

Excerpt: ... Here, the nation learns that USCIS printed “potentially hundreds” of green cards with the wrong names or sent them to the wrong addresses, a dramatic increase in such mistakes since the new system was implemented in 2012. ...The automated system was supposed to cost $536 million, but is now expected to cost $3.1 billion. It’s not only over budget but behind schedule – three years behind schedule. (Show me your shocked face! Anything the Regime touches if/when an IG gets into it, it is over budget, behind schedule and a total screw up. Per article, their "solution" for this f*!%-up is to send out envelopes with instructions to mail the cards back.....Right. Meanwhile, illegal access to all kinds of benefits at taxpayer expense assured. How criminal can this get? Used to be the Mob attempted things like this....now the US Government does it itself, to itself and to the real citizens it purportedly is supposed to protect. --Barb)

Important: Green Cards sent to wrong places, even after change of address requests

Excerpt: So when the government sends cards to the wrong address, it’s a big problem for those who should have them but don’t and for government officials who wince at the thought of the cards in the wrong hands. Now comes word that since the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (CIS) installed its Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) in 2012, the number of cards going to the wrong places has only increased. By how much, no one seems to know.

Worth Reading: WaPo Fact Checker: Does the Senate have a constitutional responsibility to consider a Supreme Court nomination? By Glenn Kessler

Excerpt: It’s matter of opinion whether a refusal to consider a nominee is a dereliction of constitutional duty or walking away from a constitutional responsibility. But the Senate majority can in effect do what it wants – unless it becomes politically uncomfortable. Democrats who suggest otherwise are simply telling supporters a politically convenient fairy tale. Three Pinocchios.

Excerpt: If confirmed, Garland would be expected to align with the more liberal members, but he is not viewed as down-the-line liberal. Particularly on criminal defense and national security cases, he's earned a reputation as centrist, and one of the few Democratic-appointed judges Republicans might have a fast-tracked to confirmation — under other circumstances. (With Republicans set to nominate Donald Trump, a life-long liberal with an aversion to transparency, a contempt for the truth and a past record of shady dealings, with a net favorability rating of -37, with 30 percent of respondents saying they have a favorable view of him and 67 percent saying they have an unfavorable view, this may be a better choice than President Hillary Clinton, with a Democrat Senate, will give us. ~Bob)

Excerpt: There's a technological revolution brewing in warfare. Silent and invisible, it relies on high intensity pulses of light to kill or incapacitate, all at the speed of light. After decades of promises and false starts, lasers are at last finally entering military service. And warfare will never be the same. The first laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman in California's Hughes Research Laboratory in 1960. But it's taken over 50 years to make them practical battlefield weapons, overcoming numerous technological hurdles along the way. It was only late last year Lockheed Martin announced it was exploring ways to put a laser on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. There is also consideration towards putting them in the AC-130 gunship and B-1 and B-2 bombers. The U.S. Navy has already fielded a laser weapon on the Austin-class USS Ponce, and anticipates arming the rest of the fleet in the 2020 to 2021 timeframe. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is looking for ways to use lasers to protect troops in the field from artillery shells, missiles, and drones. (Lots of questions, like rate of fire, effective range depending on weather conditions, the weight of the full apparatus, energy supply requirements, etc. On a clear day, mounted on a ship with lots of energy, having several of these might be really effective, taking out incoming missiles as soon as they come over the horizon. One hole burned right through the nose and into the guts of an incoming missile would pretty much take it out. But how fast can the laser recycle for the next shot? And missiles still fly fine in dense fog. --Del)

Iran's Next: Editorial: You can thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for North Korea’s nukes

Excerpt: North Korea’s boast that it just detonated its first hydrogen bomb met instant doubts from the White House and arms experts. If they’re right, Pyongyang “only” has plain-old atomic bombs. What a . . . relief? But, as one Chinese expert told The Wall Street Journal, the H-bomb claim still shows that tyrant Kim Jong-un is “marching in that direction.” For all this, thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. North Korea couldn’t have done it without their gullibility. (Yep, the rush to "negotiate" with those nice, reasonable North Korean dictators to make everything sound better and let everyone feel better..... for a few years. Kind of like the deal to let Hitler just take those parts of Czechoslovakia where some people were speaking German was supposed to work out. But gee, here's a shocker. Some people lie, cheat, steal, happily, cheerfully, joyfully, taking great pride in totally deceiving others and then going ahead with exactly what they really want to do. Not the remotest hint of shame or regret, in fact, just the glory of running right over the naive idiots who were stupid enough to believe, and want to believe, the blatant lies they were fed. How many times in history, ancient, more recent, and even modern do we have ample examples of lies and deceit from nasty, immoral, evil people? Yet we still have politicians who go in wanting to believe that they are so smart they can really convince the other guys to come clean, and change their way of thinking, and it'll all work out. Sure, and you can approach the mad dog with a chewy treat and never get bitten. When will they ever learn? And the stakes are far, far too high to take chances anymore. --Del)

Excerpt: What about Islamic law? On this topic, it is useful to turn to Robert Jackson, a giant figure in American law and politics—FDR’s attorney general, justice of the Supreme Court, and chief prosecutor of the war crimes trials at Nuremberg. In 1955, Justice Jackson penned the foreword to a book called Law in the Middle East. Unlike today’s government officials, Justice Jackson thought sharia was a subject worthy of close study. And here is what he concluded: "In any broad sense, Islamic law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts. Even casual acquaintance and superficial knowledge—all that most of us at bench or bar will be able to acquire—reveal that its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties. In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western law."

Excerpt: Hillary Clinton defended on Monday her push for regime change in Libya while she served as secretary of state, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews the U.S. “didn’t lose a single person” in the north African country. But the Democratic presidential candidate appears to have forgotten about the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks that left dead Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department information officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Clinton was one of the most ardent voices for invading Libya and deposing its dictator, Col. Moammar Gaddafi. (By "we" does she mean the AQ rebels/soon to become ISIS? United States certainly lost an ambassador and several support men who fought bravely, despite being left as "bumps in the road" by HC and BO et al. Can she retire NOW? --Barb)

Excerpt: A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times.

Excerpt: Vladimir Putin is purposefully creating a refugee crisis in order to “overwhelm” and “break” Europe, Nato’s military commander in Europe said today. Gen Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the head of the US European Command, said that President Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had “weaponised” migration through a campaign of bombardment against civilian centres.

Excerpt: 2014 saw the founding of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella organization constituting the first U.S. Muslim Brotherhood political party, and indeed the first religious identity political party, in the history of this country.

Excerpt: The stabbing spree in Israel by Palestinian terrorists continues unabated. Even when an American citizen visiting Israel is killed "What me worry? President Obama" is unfazed. At this point in his presidency Obama has only one goal: burnishing his legacy.

Excerpt: Ahead of a St. Patrick's Day deadline for the Obama administration to deliver to Congress an assessment of ISIS' culpability in genocide, the House on Monday unanimously approved a resolution calling the murder of Christians and other religious minorities genocide. The bill from Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) states that "the atrocities committed against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities targeted specifically for religious reasons are, and are hereby declared to be, 'crimes against humanity', and 'genocide'." "Each of the Contracting Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed at Paris on December 9, 1948, and other international agreements forbidding war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly the governments of countries and their nationals who are in any way supporting these crimes, are reminded of their legal obligations under the Convention and these international agreements," the resolution continues.

How long will President Obama stay silent on genocide? By Kirsten Powers

Excerpt: Hillary Clinton has said it. Marco Rubio, too. The European, the U.S. Catholic bishops and Pope have also uttered the important word to describe the Islamic State’s systematic elimination of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. It’s called genocide. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called what is happening by its correct name.

Excerpt: Iran showed few signs of moderating its human rights policies after inking a nuclear agreement with the permanent members of the U.N Security Council and Germany last July. The Islamic Republic engaged in several human rights abuses and executed nearly 1,000 people in 2015, the highest number in over 20 years. Ahmed Shaheed, the special rapporteur for Iran, told the U.N. Human Rights Council Monday “at least 966 persons — the highest rate in over two decades — were executed in [Iran in] 2015.”

Excerpt: Al-Jazeera reported witness Marcel Guy said he saw a bearded gunman speaking Arabic approach two children on the beach. One of the kids knelt in apparent Islamic prayer, while the other did not and was murdered. "The Christian boy was shot and killed right in front of my eyes," Guy said. (Christian killed. Muslim spared. CHRISTIAN GENOCIDE. POTUS continues to lead from behind, focusing on black hip hop stars and musicals as "educational" and climate change, as OBL apparently encouraged in a letter, recently revealed by MM. The Reckoning will befall us all. --Barb)

MEET THE REAL ISLAMOPHOBIA. Exclusive: Joseph Farah explains it's the left that fears and capitulates to Muslims

Excerpt: Suggest that Islam bears watching as a dangerous ideology that can foster hatred, violence, terror and even genocide and you will almost assuredly be labeled an “Islamophobe.”...I can still remember a generation ago when those who warned about communism were dismissed as “red-baiters” who saw communists “under every bed.” But communism ended up killing 100 million people in the 20th century and making 10 times that many lives miserable. (Who would dream Communists march openly associated with Hollywood and unions and would have a presidential candidate in the Democratic primary? --Barb)

Belgian Authorities Find Islamic State Flag in Apartment After Gunbattle. Authorities say police sniper shot and killed an Algerian national during a police raid linked to investigations into November’s Paris attacks